Clementine
by TimeTheFinalFrontier
Summary: At the end of the world and in the midst of insanity, Alfred sits back and thinks about the time when he used to be human. Warnings for character death.


_50 states,_

_50 lines,_

_50 crying all the time's. _

_50 boys,_

_50 lies,_

_50 I'm gonna change my mind's._

"Clementine," he said softly, sitting down heavily next to his brother.

"'s not my name," Alfred whispered, clutching his knees a little closer to his chest.

"Clementine," Matthew repeated.

Alfred just sighed. They were back at the old house again, or what was left of it, at least.

The roof was gone, and so were the southern, northern, and western walls. The parlor was gone too, and so were the kitchen and the bedrooms and the playroom. The front door was gone, but the frame was still standing. The French window that used to define the eastern wall was hanging in jagged shards from the place it used to be, and the wall itself was little more than a stack of bricks three feet tall and four wide. The foundation was cracked, and there was a tree growing where their bed used to be.

They'd spent an hour clearing out the debris from the house, just like they used to when they were kids, except this time there were more splinters and broken boards of wood and fallen bricks and rain-bleached bones and weeds growing in the spot where their mother had stood countless hours over a burning wood-stove and where their father had sat at his hand-made desk and where their sister had screamed her way through her first, second, and third births – all still born.

Now they sat side by side against the remains of a place they used to call home, squinting against the setting sun.

"Clementine," Matthew repeated, this time more urgently.

"Don't call me that. Arthur will be cross," Alfred said, never taking his eyes off the crack in the foundation that he'd been staring at for the past five hours, as if he could fill it up and build a house around it.

"Arthur's dead," Matthew gently reminded him.

"Is he?" Alfred asked, disinterested.

"Yeah, Clem. You killed him yourself. Don't you remember?"

"Not really," Alfred responded.

"You didn't have a choice, Clementine, he'd already destroyed all of Europe, or most of it, anyway, and he was going to do the same to us."

"Why couldn't they have killed him?" Alfred complained.

"They tried. They tried, Clem, they really did. But he was too strong. They died fighting. All of them. And we... And we tried to help, but it all happened too fast. He'd already bombed all of Asia, and Africa didn't stand a chance against his plague, and he'd torched Europe by the time we got there. We took the fastest plane, we ran to the airport as soon as we heard, but it was too late... Francis was the last one standing. Remember? It was just the four of us, and he shot Francis before you could even pull your gun. He died in our arms. Remember?"

"Who is Francis?" Alfred asked, numbly.

"He was..." Matthew's voice broke. "He was someone we used to love. How can you not remember?"

"I think you're insane," Alfred said.

Matthew sighed softly and squeezed his brother's hand.

"I'm glad they're dead, anyway," Alfred said in a weak voice. "They ruined everything. Sarah was pregnant with her fourth, and it was gonna live this time, I just knew it was. The crop was good, that year, and father had hunted so many animals that mother said we'd have trouble eating it all. And then they came and took it all away!"

"We agreed to it, Clementine."

"The hell we did. They came to us like Gods and asked if we wanted to live forever, and that's all they said. 'Do you want to live forever,' and that was it."

"That's not true. They told us the truth. They said it'd hurt, and that we'd have to die first. They told us nothing would ever be the same."

"We were young. We didn't care. We wanted to live forever. They didn't tell us that we'd lose everything. They didn't tell us that Sarah's baby wouldn't live because Sarah would be dead, or that father wouldn't have to worry about curing all the meat or that mother wouldn't have to worry about cooking it all, because they'd be dead too."

"Clementine..." Matthew whispered, blinking tears from his eyes.

"Who else is dead?" Alfred asked after a while, raising their intertwined hands.

"Well, the plague wiped out Africa, and the radiation killed Asia, and the nuclear winter killed everyone in the South Pacific. You did a good job of protecting us, but it got in the water... No one died, but... Within a hundred years, there weren't any more babies and the scientists couldn't figure out a cure for the infertility before it was too late."

"Does that mean my people are dead, too?"

"Yeah, Clementine, it does."

"And yours?"

"Yes."

"What about South America?"

"They went to war."

"And?"

"They lost. Everyone lost."

"There were people in Antarctica, though, weren't there? Not many, but there's still a chance, isn't there?"

"Once there weren't any more people to bring fuel and food, well... They burned whatever they could, and they ate the bodies, but it was so _cold,_ Clementine."

"Oh."

"It's all right, Clementine. It's O.K."

Alfred started to cry. "When did you die?" He asked quietly.

"A thousand years ago," Matthew said softly, reaching up to wipe the tears from his brother's eyes.

Alfred laughed. "I'm sorry. I ask you that every day, don't I?"

"Yeah, yeah, you do."

"And we have the same exact conversation every day, don't we?"

"Every day for the last thousand years."

"I'm sorry," Alfred choked.

"It's all right," Matthew whispered. "We'll have the same conversation tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after, and every day after that for the next thousand years. I don't mind."

"Matthew..."

"Yes, Clementine?"

"How did you die?"

"Same way as all the others did."

"And how was that?"

"You killed me, Clementine."

Alfred turned away and started to weep. He remembered now.

"It's all right," Matthew said softly.

_Is it gone? Is it gone? Is it floating in the air?_

His name had been Clementine, a long time ago, before he'd agreed to live forever, before the war, before the plague, before the bombs, before he'd killed everyone even as they begged him not to.

"I wish my name was Clementine," he said, turning into the wall that had crumbled with a thousand years of age, and falling asleep with the knowledge that in the morning he wouldn't remember and he'd wake up in the morning for the next thousand years and the next million years after that and the next billion years after that, for the rest of eternity, hearing that voice calling his name and reminding him of how he'd killed the world in 50 days.

* * *

A/N: Inspired by the song Clementine by Sarah Jaffe.


End file.
